82 



thing worthy of the name of houses towards the close of the 

 sixteenth century. The English penetrating to the centre of 

 Ulster, in 1 542 found it a jungle. Tyrone's country is described 

 as " not containing a single castell, nor yet one walled town ; 

 nothing but bogs of water, so that it would be hard to have 

 it inhabited." Sir Fulke Conway, one of the principal settlers 

 in King James's Plantation of Ulster wrote home saying : 

 "This part of ye country is bleak and desolate as though foot of 

 man had never penetrated the wilderness. " The English 

 Government described Derry as we would now describe the 

 most remote and unappropriated colonial fields ; and English 

 captains, finding no spoil of war, complained that "the Irish in 

 the interior lived without houses, and that O'Neill kept his 

 people and cattle in such wild places that the English could not 

 reach them, nor even certainly know their whereabouts." 

 Traps to catch wolves were part of the provision made for Ire- 

 land by Cromwell's Government ; and in the year 1683 a con- 

 siderable quantity of fox and other skins was exported from 

 Belfast to England, Holland, and the Baltic. 



Mr. Workman showed that Irish houses were built of wood, 

 wattles, and mud, and in some cases of loose stones, till long 

 after the English invasion. Tara Hill, which was the abode of 

 kings and chieftains, and a place where the most substantial 

 buildings might be expected, had nothing but houses of wood 

 and clay, and there is no evidence that mortar was ever used in 

 pagan times. Irish houses were beehive-shaped, probably be- 

 cause wattles and clay were most readily fashioned into a house 

 of such a form. 



Mr. Workman here exhibited a facsimile of a map of Carrick- 

 fergus in Elizabeth's time, in which, side by side with the cas- 

 telled houses of the English, the primeval cabins of the Irishry 

 were depicted. These huts were half globes, without eaves or 

 chimney, a single aperture serving for door and window. The 

 reader also showed a sketch of a stone house of similar form 

 from Arran, in Galway Bay, which is believed to date from 

 pagan times, and gave it as his opinion that these were the 

 dwellings of a people who lived in the open air, and were stran- 



